Ralph Meatyard

Yesterday John showed us some winter landscape pictures taken by Ralph Meatyard in the late 1950's - I loved these; they are so crisp you can feel the chill.  This one could be after a holocaust:

 Winter landscape

I like the image above because it transports me there.  I could tell you what the cold feels like, what it smells like, what it sounds like, how it makes your soul feel because I have been there - not literally but somewhere just like it.  So it has an emotional resonance with me.  I also like like it beacuse the tangled branches give it a stark feel, its not a 'pretty' landscape, and they make it a more abstract.  'Abstract' to do with or exisiting in theory rather than practice, not concrete, not representational - it's a word that keeps appearing in connection with images I like.

Landscape with barbed wire and telepgraph poles

This inspired me to try converting some of the magic hour photos I wasn't happy with into black and white and then I tried a more sepia look (I am liking black and white more and more - it seems to create more of an atmosphere and mood than colour) -

However, Ralph Meatyard did some other work which is not really my thing:

Christopher with clothesline and rubber chicken

Title unknown

Because I just don't get them I find it hard to start ctitically evaluating these photos.  Its something I need to work on - detaching myself from the emotional response to an image and starting to take a more critical view.

Ralph Meatyard images from Masters of Photography:  www.masters-of-photography.com/M/meatyard/meatyard.html